Justin Williams: A Tablet Isn't a Large Phone
It's all too easy to lump tablets in with phones as "mobile devices." There are certainly similarities. The iPad and Android tablets run the same operating systems as their smaller cousins, and some touchscreen principles work the same across devices. But tablets have a different form, ergonomics, and context than phones. So designing for tablet takes a fresh perspective and, almost always, a whole new design concept.
As usual, Justin Williams puts it best in an economy of words:
The best iPad apps are not those that just stretch
their iPhone table views out to take advantage of the
larger screen. They are apps like Twitter,
Reeder and
that invented new paradigms and changed the
way we used the device. They are the apps that get
lost under our fingers because they work intuitively
with multitouch gestures.
By similar token, the best Honeycomb apps are not going
to be those that just stretch out a ListView control
to adapt to the screen size whether it be 4" or 9".
Tablets offer us an opportunity to shake up how we
have interacted with computers in the past thirty years.
If all Android subscribed to was to make it easy to
port a product designed for a phone to a tablet, then
it is a waste for developers and a shame for users
who will embrace the platform. The Xoom is still in
its infancy, so there is plenty of time for Android
developers to kick the tires and see what the tablets
can offer.
As I'm fond of saying: a tablet is like a phone as a swimming pool is like a bathtub. Similar on the surface, but intended for entirely different uses. The design has to reflect that.
